Creating Web-viewable Derivatives of Images for Image Database

Having created digital images in the TIFF format, you will need to perform additional processing on them to make them viewable on the web. Our current standard for each image in the THL Image Database is a JPEG that is 600 pixels on its long side and a GIF that is a 120 pixel square, including a black border on all 4 sides. The file extension needs to be in lower case (i.e. .jpg and .gif).

If you have Adobe Photoshop, you can use an Action to batch process a number of images. Use this Action script and follow the steps below:

1. Save the Action script anywhere you want, though if you can find a Photoshop/Plug-ins folder that is probably the best place.

2. Open Photoshop. Check your Photoshop preferences to make sure that the files will be saved with the proper file extension: in the Photoshop menu go to Preferences > File Handling… Make sure that "Append File Extension" is set to "Always" and the "Use Lower Case" box is NOT checked. Click "OK".

3. Go to the Actions panel and click on the arrow in the upper right-hand corner. Go down to where it says "Load Actions" and point that to the imagedbsizerscript.ATN file.

4. Begin by making a test folder with five or so images. Call it "Test" and put in sample copies from the images you'll be processing. There is no need to open up the images in Photoshop. We'll do that within Photoshop.

5. In Photoshop go to File > Automate > Batch

6. In the "Batch" dialog that opens up, set it up as follows:

Set: imagedbsizerscript.ATN

Action: JPG_GIF

Source: Folder

Choose: --this is where you browse to your test folder.

Destination: Folder

Choose: -- this is where you choose a folder to put your processed images in.

Errors: Log Errors to File

Save As: Make a text file to log the errors.

7. This should process all your images, saving a 600 px JPG and a 120 px GIF in the same folder. I have it set up to save the images to different folders in the action, but I think those folders are hard-coded, which is why you are selecting a new destination in that Batch dialog. Presuming that works ok, now do the same for the real folder of images.

8. Once you are done, you can sort the files by type and put the JPGs into 1 folder and the GIFs into another.